


blood to gold

by meikuree (rillarev)



Series: maybe it's my hard head that keeps me dreaming [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gender-Neutral Hange Zoë, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Light Angst, mention of canon deaths for two characters, non-binary Hange, not really explicitly shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22986580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillarev/pseuds/meikuree
Summary: Hange has a difficult conversation with the person indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of their close comrades.(based on ch. 126; spoilers ahead)
Relationships: Hange Zoë/Pieck
Series: maybe it's my hard head that keeps me dreaming [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652560
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53





	blood to gold

> _"Everything dies, all will come to an end,_  
>  _Glory, song, title, earthly gain._  
>  _Only blood and gold will remain."_
> 
> \-- Endre Ady, "Blood and Gold" (tr. Joe Váradi)

  
When the indefatigable dust of rushed alliance-building— and momentary truces resting on the most insecure links of trust— finally settles, the resulting lull allows Hange’s suppressed feelings and bodily complaints to opportunistically surface.

In an abandoned Military Police outpost (graciously scouted by Annie for the team’s momentary use), Hange concludes the last meeting for the day to collapse onto their bed. This is the only reprieve they will enjoy from the sound and fury of the past forty-eight hours. Their body feels as if it has taken on a hollowed-out life of its own, exhausted and _unable_ , not unwilling, to listen to any adjurations to get up. They can’t move, simple as that. The toll of constant physical and mental activity is now making itself heard in angry flaring bruises all over their body. Sheer enervation pervades their entire being. 

In the night, Hange falls asleep like the dead.

* * *

Hange no longer dreams. They used to, in younger, and more exuberant times. Then, the world had still possessed its polychromatic lustres and guises, its colours viscerally imprinted into Hange’s subconscious. It’s funny now, how they simply took for granted then that the horizon would always be suffused by the warm promise of a day to come tomorrow—of more knowledge lying ahead in the future, a world that would unfold itself to them if they only kept moving.

Whatever future they now have, _if_ they have any, has to first get past the monstrosities that Eren himself has unleashed upon the world.

Hange’s day is greeted by the brusque embrace of another dour meeting to discuss what to do about the unpredictable elephant in the room, Eren. They try to keep morale up. Strategies are suggested with bravado, only to be shot down by the piercing realism of all the uncertain variables at hand. _Where is Eren? Where is Zeke? What the hell can anyone actually do?_ are the questions nobody speaks aloud, but which hang in the air like a miasma of dread.

And then there is the unspoken tension, the entire gulf of Marley’s and Paradis’s animosity. Everyone has internally agreed to put that aside for the time being, but there is still resistance, in a subtle furrow of Mikasa’s brows, in Armin’s exacerbated nervousness, in Pieck’s usually placid manner giving way to uncharacteristic stoicism, in Yelena’s surprising silence in response to someone condemning Zeke. People are not sure how far they want to go to share state secrets or bare their hearts. There are people in the room on both sides whom the other side blames for many heinous things. The meeting ends with many questions and no consensus.

As the meeting’s attendees filter out of the room, Hange palms their face with an air of frustration and defeatism. It’s then they hear Pieck speaking up, her voice suddenly in their close vicinity.

“You don’t have to forgive me, you know.”

Hange looks up. Pieck had been sitting directly opposite them earlier. Now she stands right before Hange, staring at them with an impressively serene but still intent look. Nobody else remains in the room.

They both know exactly what she refers to. Even if it’s been three years. _Especially_ because it’s been three years: three years for the accumulation of unspoken conversations and apologies, of grief and resentment at the enemy for taking the lives of Hange’s closest friends. There was Erwin, and then Moblit. Levi came a very close third. Pieck had an indirect hand in all of their fates except Levi’s, Hange remembers belatedly. The thought is not so much rationalized as felt, in the coarse texture of wrathful hands curling upon themselves into incandescent fists. Pieck sees the shifts in Hange’s demeanor and her eyes fall. She looks as if she is about to say something for a moment, but refrains from doing so since she knows it helps nothing, and finally heads out.

Hange lingers for a few minutes and then, only then, lets out the stale breath they have been holding.

* * *

Hange had initially been optimistic about the whole idea of a pact, mostly because there was little else left to go on. In the moment, Pieck’s complimentary words were a relief for a commander trying to broker a seemingly impossible alliance. Perhaps not everything would be going to the dogs—what a cause for hope.

(Privately, the possibility of looking at every aspect of the Cart Titan’s biology excited her, to see why and how it differed greatly from the other titan shifters’. And Hange had been genuinely intrigued by Pieck’s wise personality, and wanted to get to know the high intelligentsia priestess of the Warriors better. And she’d called them “titan professor”, as though getting on anyone’s good side came second nature to her.)

How was it possible for the depths of ruthlessness and slaughter to lie in someone with such a mellow and amiable face? Perhaps that was the poetic absurdity that some higher being always tried to enforce in the world at every second. That at the end of the day, for all that Pieck looked like she ought to be different, she was still chained to the Marleyan enterprise, a horseman for its omnipresent jingoistic cruelty. The same cruelty that now feels, as it happens, unbearably personal.

* * *

Hange has had to mourn one too many faces. The memories of Moblit resound especially painfully. What did he mean, that they were humanity’s shining hope? Was humanity’s best meant to be hiding in one corner, out of good ideas for facing the dead-end of stopping hundreds of colossal titans?

Vengeance feels like a guillotine—an entity that wants justice to be served with a swift, purifying cut. _Let history renew itself on a clean slate free of enemies_. Hange once accepted that their line of work would entail heavy personal collaterals. They’d almost just got done burying and dusting their losses behind them, paying mental respect all these years to faces now consigned to the annals of moribund history. Pieck’s words have reset the temporality of grief.

* * *

Hange sits beside Pieck on the steps outside the outpost, elbows on their knees and their head looking down in silence. Pieck looks at them, quiet eyes filled with wondering. Hange’s trying to find the words, but all the starting sentences they can muster ring hollow in their ears. _Hey, do you or the others feel any guilt at all for what you did years ago?_

That afternoon, Hange had used their brief pocket of free time to walk to the room Pieck was sharing with Annie and Mikasa. They’d knocked on the door, waiting with their feet steady on the ground. Pieck opened the door and, seeing none of Hange’s usual uncompromising elan, understood intuitively what they must have come here for. “Can we speak?” Hange had asked.

Sitting outside together, Pieck answers what Hange’s been wondering all along before they can articulate it. “What I meant by it was,” she starts, “that forming this pact doesn’t have to amount to forgiving us. Or ever accepting what we-- I did.”

Hange looks up. Pieck’s face is composed as usual, but her mouth is downturned slightly, and her eyes are sad as if they are carrying the waters of thousands of years of conflict. What she says flows smoothly off her tongue, the gossamer words of sincerity.

Hange nods in respect to what Pieck is saying. They are working together now, people from both sides of a conflict that has temporarily united, but Pieck is venturing to acknowledge that there must be space to acknowledge how too much water has already flowed under the bridge. Then Hange realises that Pieck must be assuaging them, that collaborating does not mean condonation of Marley’s actions, or even those of any person they are now cooperating very closely with. That they are not blotting the memory of fallen friends. The anger of before gives way to appreciation that perhaps Pieck is coming from a place of empathy, has entertained the same persecuting ruminations about her own world.

“Have you had the same thoughts?” Hange returns the questions. “About Paradis and the Survey Corps.”

It’s now Pieck’s turn to look away. Acknowledging resentment is a vulnerable process—one that Pieck bears gracefully, to her credit, still. She leans in closer, and tells in no uncertain terms Hange about her Panzer squad, about Marcel and her fears of losing Annie. Colt and Porco. She has lost people once, and lost them twice, and then lost them over and over again, each time more raw and harsh than the last.

“But,” Pieck demurs, “I don’t know that it’s your fault. It’s not as if you had a choice. Blaming you is the easy way out.” _Sasha is dead, and that has not offered closure for my Panzer teammates_ , is the subtext wedged between her confessions. _It has to come from another place._

Those in the Paradis team are no angels themselves, Hange muses. Especially not Eren. They have all killed and been killed in turn for it. There is a perverse egalitarianism on both sides. 

Hange soon has to head back, and so the brief interlude of real feelings making themselves known has to end. But before they do, they rebuff a conciliatory handshake with Pieck in favour of giving her a firm hug. It is awkward and brief, but it feels more right. _Thank you for being honest_. There have been no apologies swapped, but both of them appreciate that there is no expectation to, that those should come only when it can be done right.  
  


* * *

There is a tiring futility to the cycle of revenge. The guillotine will prise open, release its springs, and reign overhead again, asking for more. People feed history’s guillotine with death and more deaths as though it’ll one day turn around and bless them all with a karmic windfall. As if the guillotine will one day crave them in return for their craving of it.  
  
Three years it’s been, but Hange acknowledges that the days will eventually blur and blur more unto each other. Anger and blind rage are sharp pinpricks, dominant in the moment but ultimately smoothed in the longer view of historical time. Vengeful emotions such as these will not find closure or catharsis. For the sake of daily life, Hange must let go in their own time.

Facing the sky, Hange shades their eyes from the sun with a raised hand. In this story, everyone is a villain to someone. Ergo, nobody is a villain.

**Author's Note:**

> hange, imo, doesn't get as many scenes expanding on their thought process. i thought that they at some point would have had to contend with complex feelings around the alliance so i wrote this. sorry if i get any canon stuff wrong - i'm really bad at keeping track of what happens
> 
> come say hi on [tumblr](https://meikuree.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/meikuree)


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